by Pierre Morsa —
First, a mandatory disclaimer: I like Sixties-Boomer music. If poor musical tastes offend you, don’t read this. Last week, I was searching for an old song on YouTube, when suddenly I noticed a video from Joan Baez. I realized that, despite priding myself on my knowledge of 60s music, I never actually listened to one of her songs. So I clicked and listened to it. It was called Diamonds and Rust.
by Pierre Morsa —
Some leaders are afraid to let other people know that they took public speaking coaching. I want to explain why it’s a mistake, and why the best leaders are proud of being coached. The Consulting Partner who hired me back in 1996, for a company that was then called Andersen Consulting, was an extremely charismatic person and an excellent orator. One advice he gave openly to his peers, and to us young consultants, was to get professional public speaking coaching to become better orators.
by Pierre Morsa —
What happens when two parties position themselves in a similar manner on the same topic? Simple: the one which is the most credible wins. By “most credible,” I mean “the one that incarnates the rhetoric with the most authenticity.” There is a mistake that has been made by many traditional parties. Some traditional parties saw new parties start to gain popularity by advocating extremist views. So they started to adopt a slightly watered down version of these views to attract voters.
by Pierre Morsa —
You’ve probably already seen those presenters who climb on stage and rush into their presentation, apparently oblivious to the fact that they have an audience in front of them. Once they’re done, they rush out of the stage, as if you didn’t exist. To avoid looking like one of these presenters, try to establish a connection with the audience as soon as possible. Look and smile at them as you enter the stage.
by Pierre Morsa —
You’ve probably all seen these slides: they use a picture which is “cliché,” like two shaking hands. Using a few of these clichés is fine, because they are often the clearest way to illustrate the idea of the slide; it’s nice to be creative, but clarity of the message comes first. But some presentations seem to overflow with these clichés, using them on every slide. So I asked myself the question: why are some presentations nearly cliché-free, while other presentations are full of them?
by Joe Ross —
The days of the expert or reliable narrator are over. We have entered the “Disinformation Age” where fake news, conspiracy stories, and meme warfare rule. One of the most prominent casualties, at least from a presentation perspective, is the TED-like style, top down, subject matter expert: the teacher or preacher schooling their passively sitting and listening students. We see trust move from the command and control leadership style and morph into something vastly flatter, decentralized/distributed, and perhaps even autonomously self-organizing.
A funny thing happened when I was describing my “dream job” to a friend. I imagined a company whose mission would be to help people become great presenters, and had a culture that was both supporting and nurturing while remaining professional and attentive to clients’ needs. My friend said: “I know that company!” A few weeks later after a relaxing summer vacation between positions, I found myself in the company of all my new colleagues, some whom I met for the very first time, at our annual Fall team meeting.
by Pierre Morsa —
It’s your turn to present. You’ve launched your presentation and enter the stage. But how do you know if your presentation remote is working? If you start clicking back and forth between your first and second slide to see if it is working, everyone will notice what you’re doing, and you will not make a great first impression. Luckily, someone shared a simple tip on twitter. Just duplicate your first slide.